This invention relates to a method of sampling steel material and its device, and more particularly to a method and a device for quickly sampling a composition analyzing specimen in hot state from a preferred position on the surface of a continuously cast piece held at a high temperature.
In the continuous casting technology, the qualities (composition) of cast steel piece in a non-stationary part, e.g., in a junction part between different kinds of steel materials being continuously cast, should be noted at a high temperature state of the cast piece in view of energy conservation and high productivity, particularly when the hot charge or direct sequential rolling operation is intended.
However, no established technology was available for online collecting test samples from a preferred position of a hot cast steel piece, in the prior art. Therefore, offline sampling was commonly used. Unfortunately, the offline sampling causes temperature drop of the cast steel piece, while traditional analyzing procedure using cut chips requires a long time for analyzing the components. Consequently, it was not possible to apply so-called hot charging to a furnace in which a red-hot, cast and cut steel piece, as conveyed from the casting machine, was directly transported into the heating furnace for saving additional heating energy required for succeeding hot rolling processing. In addition, it was also impossible to introduce the direct sequential rolling, as normally called, in which a red-hot, cast and cut steel piece was rolled directly or after being heated only at both ends whose temperature might drop more quickly.
Regarding the method of rapid component analyzing, there is known a quantoback system in which a small block specimen is prepared from steel material for spectro analyses. According to the quantoback system, the quantometer (photoelectric directly reading type spectro-analyzer) is used for spectroanalysis. With this system, analyzed results can be indicated on a meter, after solving the inconvenience associated with conventional spectro-analyzers. Various types of the quantoback systems are available, such as production control models or research purpose models.